Category Archives: Seasons

Corn

“An Ear of Corn,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and colored pencil, 2014

My grandfather, a man of few words, looked up from the bags of corn he was husking as he sat on the porch swing, and muttered, “Corn, corn, corn.”

It does start to get a little old. After the excitement of the first ears of summer and the exclamations about the sweetness of this batch compared to that batch, the abundance of late summer corn can be overwhelming, especially on a farm.

One of the ways my family varied the corn diet was to make succotash. I’ve never really understood succotash. Why ruin a perfectly good bowl of corn by adding beans to it? But my mother and her family loved succotash, and my grandmother made it frequently. Her succotash was very plain – lima beans, corn, salt, pepper, and butter. The secret, my mother told me, was to scrape the “milk” from the cob after cutting off the kernels.

Saturday, August 6, 1921 – “Nice day. Men working at hay at Peterland. Corn is coming & potatoes are looking nice on the hill lot. Busy times for everyone now, gathering in the products of the farms. Lilla our good neighbor sent us some sweet corn of which Agnes made us some nice succotash. Ellsworth’s corn is nearly ready to pick for eating.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Tuesday, August 16, 1921 – “Agnes and Lydia went over to Durham, took over some succotash and a nice apple pie, some potatoes & corn – two loaves of bread & a cake for which they were very thankful.” – Lydia Jane Hall

“A Bowl of Succotash,” Carol Crump Bryner, 1992

Everyone has theories about corn – how long to cook it (my brother says to boil it until the steam smells like corn, my husband claims 12 minutes to be ideal) – how to store it – how to butter it – and how to eat it (I employ the typewriter carriage method starting at one end and eating three rows at time, then pushing the carriage back to the beginning and starting over – my husband eats it round and round like the gears of a clock) – and how to make it last through the winter.

My parents had strong opinions about the handling of fresh sweet corn. Dinner conversation in summer was punctuated by pronouncements about the freshness, sweetness, and toughness/tenderness of the corn. My dad subscribed to the theory that husking should be done immediately. He claimed that sweetness seeped from the corn into the husks if you left them on too long. One summer, when I was visiting my parents, my cousin Sue and I went to Lyman Orchards where she bought a bagful of corn to take home to grill (in the husks) for dinner. After storing it in our refrigerator to stay cool until she drove home, Sue and I sat outside with my mother drinking tea and having an afternoon chat. Meanwhile, my father, horrified to find un-husked corn in the fridge, pulled it out and stripped it naked thinking he was doing my cousin an enormous favor.

My mother spent September days carefully blanching, cutting, scraping, and freezing corn. She was very particular about the process, and I have to admit that I’ve never tasted frozen corn as good as hers. In the winter she rationed these bags of gold – one per week – and heated the contents over a double boiler. She put a chunk of butter on top, and stirred the kernels gently as they thawed. To eat that corn at a Sunday dinner in December was to taste summer all over again. Only better.

Our grandson, who is sweeter than all the sweet corn in the world, came to spend the afternoon with us after a recent Sunday visit to the local farmers’ market. We husked the corn we had bought, and it was so lovely that I wanted to preserve it on paper. Henry helped me choose the colors, and I showed him how to squeeze just the right amount of paint onto the palette and how to wet the brush before picking up the color. We painted the kernels together, and he painted the “green parts” a very bright green. When I asked him to sign his name he insisted that we needed to add more facts. And so we did. Opinions about corn and about art start early, and I’m happy to encourage them.

“Henry and Carol Made a Picture of Corn,” Henry Thomas Kennedy and Carol Crump Bryner, 2014

On Wednesday: Peaches

The Little House on the Hill

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“The Little House,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

When the little house moved from the glen to the hill, it left its bottom behind. The 1912 foundation was made from the large and abundant stones that both plagued and blessed most Connecticut farmers. The unending supply of rocks made difficult the plowing and planting of the fields, but easy the building of the walls. My great-grandfather William recorded “picking stones” as a frequent activity in the fields. The little house’s rocky footprint is still visible and accessible.

Kirt Crump at the glen house foundation, 2013

Yards away from the foundation sit two boulder-like stones. They cover an old well and keep animals and people from plunging into its depths.

Well stones, 2013

Sometime between 1925 and 1943 my grandfather and his helpers lifted the little house off its stone base, transported it through the orchard, and positioned it on a new cellar at the top of the farm’s hill lot. Red painted, white trimmed, and dormered, the little house seemed a cousin to my own house – the one my father built in 1946 on Center Street in Wallingford, Connecticut. I couldn’t find a photo of the little house on the farm, but you can get an idea of how it looked from this picture of my own childhood home.

The Crumps’ house on East Center Street, 1947

The little house on the hill was a dollhouse compared to the big farmhouse. In winter we climbed the pathway from the farmhouse driveway to the top of the hill. We borrowed big pots from my grandmother, saved pieces of cardboard from Christmas presents, gloated over new “flying saucers,” and fought over the prime sledding transport – the “Radio Flyer.” We took turns going up and down all afternoon with the promise of popcorn and hot chocolate in the farmhouse kitchen afterwards. The hill was short, but mighty. We often poured water on it to freeze a faster ride. Now, in my dotage, I feel sorry for my aunt, uncle, and cousins who had to walk up and down that hill after a Sunday afternoon of sledding. Ice is better for sitting down than for standing up.

Sledding on the hill, 1950’s

In 1943 my mother’s older brother Francis married Glenna and brought her to live in the little red house on his parents’ farm. My cousin and his family live there still.

Francis and Glenna Hall, 1943

In summer we walked up the hill to the red house in sweaty pursuit of popsicles. Our Auntie Glenna led us down the cellar steps into the cool dirt-floored basement and opened the lid of the deep freeze to find the fruity popsicles nestled in their metal beds. Our mothers made their own popsicles – grape, strawberry, orange, and lime. But Auntie Glenna’s tasted best. Care was taken not to stick a tongue onto the frozen metal mold. It was so tempting. Maybe that hint of danger, and the descent into the dimly lit cellar made the treat more special – or maybe it was the warm and cheerful welcome we always got from our sweet Auntie Glenna.

“Grape Popsicle,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

On Monday: Corn

Janet

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“Birthday Cake for Janet,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor and colored pencil, 2014

My mom, Janet Hall Crump, appears often in my blog posts. She was my most direct connection to the farm. The stories she told became part of my stories – as though I’d been right there with her when things happened. Her sentiments became my sentiments, and sometimes it seems she lives on in my head, speaking to me moment to moment – thinking out loud the way she always did.

The other day, while making lunch, I heard her say, “Never put tomato on a chicken salad sandwich.” The lovely heirloom tomato I was about to slice stayed whole – my chicken salad unadorned. She’s been gone for six years, but there are times I feel she’s not only always with me, but that I’m becoming her. When I look at my hands, I see her hands. My sideways glance in the mirror shows her face. Her words come out of my mouth when I speak to my children and my husband and my grandchildren. Her adages and advice (“break your ear before you eat it” – “he who hesitates is lost” – “you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”) and mispronunciations (“clorestoral” – “bronical pneumonia” – “Manatuska Valley”) have become part of my family’s vocabulary. She was so full of life, always, and memories of her – both loveable and annoying – keep me company as I cut tomatoes, boil corn, do my shopping, and work on this blog.

Carol and Janet, near Palmer, Alaska, 1971

Yesterday would have been her ninety-sixth birthday. On the farm they celebrated birthdays with cake and ice cream and presents. They donned their best clothes and took time away from chores to mark special occasions – birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. On her last birthday, her eighty-ninth, when she was in a nursing home after a stroke, we gave her a party. She was paralyzed on one side and could barely speak. But she still had her cheerful smile and her sense of humor. My brother gave her a toy hippo dressed in a pink tutu. When the hippo danced across the table to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” my mother laughed so hard tears ran down her face. She watched the hippo do its act several times, then turned to me and said, “Where’s my cake?”

In my very favorite photo of Janet, her face is hidden. She’s at a party, and she’s falling out of a little chair. It was typical for her to be in motion. Her personality was outgoing. She thrived on the chaos of farm and family life, and avoided quiet solitude. She didn’t hold anything back, and gave generously of her love, opinions, and judgments.

Janet Falling off a Chair, 1919

Another photo taken that same day shows her sitting in her white outfit – still just a baby, but already with her grown up face. She always looked like herself. She had powerful features and dynamic hair, and she took great pride in looking just right.

Janet in a white bonnet, sitting on the ground, 1919

One of her most frequent complaints about her childhood, which seemed otherwise idyllic, was that because she was the third child, no one had time to cut her hair properly or dress her in new clothes. But in entries from my great-grandmother’s journals it’s obvious Janet was loved and celebrated.

Friday, May 13, 1921 – “Nice day. Janet Hall went to the barbers with her mother and sister & brother – came home with her hair all nicely cut. Looking so sweet and peachy. Everyone admires her.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Her family threw a festive party for her on her third birthday.

Tuesday, August 9, 1921 – “Agnes & Hattie, Lydia, Francis & Janet went to Meriden to do some shopping. Janet has a birthday tomorrow. She is three years old. They are getting up a little party of cousins for her all near her age, the oldest seven, youngest three. Agnes is making birthday cake & cookies. She has returned from Meriden with her arms full of packages. Emily is making caps of red, pink & blue paper for each one.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, August 10, 1921 – “A very nice time for everyone. All busy with getting apples outside and getting ready for the party indoors. Emily & Agnes setting the house in order, etc., which looks very homelike. The party came about half after three & stayed until after five. Such a happy crowd came marching in with their gifts for little Janet. She was so sweet in receiving them. Ellen with her two, Alice with two, Gertrude with her two, Agnes with her three. Mrs. J. D. McGuaghey with little David, & Hattie. It was a treat to see them around the table eating ice cream & cake. Nine cousins, ten in all. The party a success. Very pleasing to me.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Janet’s third birthday party – Janet in front on right, 1921

In the photo from the party, the cousins are dressed in white outfits, the standard in those days for party wear, maybe because ice cream stains could be bleached out. She does look, however, in need of a haircut. For the rest of her life she took great care with her appearance –she loved nice clothes and red lipstick and a proper hairdo. She posed over and over for my dad’s camera when they were courting, wearing stylish suits, dresses, coats, and shoes.

Janet near Muddy River, 1942

My brother, father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and I were the happy recipients of her party-loving nature. We each had a special cake or pie for our own birthdays – my brother an orange cake for his June birthday, my grandfather a coconut cake for his December birthday, my uncle Aaron a blueberry pie. On my ninth birthday she gave me a party at the farm, and invited twenty-one girls, our entire Girl Scout troop. She wouldn’t let me pick and choose my favorite friends – I wasn’t allowed to leave anyone out. She organized games and party favors and food, as she did for all my birthdays. She always made me feel special.

Carol’s Farm Birthday Party

In 1938 she went to college in Boston to study art. She stayed only one year, but she was a good student and became an accomplished painter. As much as she loved school, however, her heart was at the farm. My grandmother wrote her weekly letters relating the news of Whirlwind Hill. In this note Agnes talks about her own birthday.

“Dear Janet, Just a line or two this morning to thank you for the dearest birthday card I have ever had. Did you get your piece of my birthday cake? I forgot and left it in the oven all night and it was a little dry in spots, but I took your piece out of the middle, or center, should I say.” Agnes Biggs Hall

The happiest occasion of her life may have been marrying my father. She always knew what she liked, and she liked my dad. My grandmother warned her that he was a “playboy,” and not to be trusted. But as my mother told me often, she was madly in love with her Charlie. They married during the war and wrote letters to each other daily. On Wednesday I’ll talk about my dad – the other half of the equation that made me.

Janet’s Wedding, February 6, 1943

I never knew until I had my own children about the fears that plagued my mother. She suffered panic attacks, and it was sometimes torture for her to drive long distances. But if she loved someone, she made a beeline through her anxiety, and got to where she needed to be. She drove me to New York, to Massachusetts, to New Hampshire. She flew to Alaska by herself to visit me seventeen times, and I never realized how hard those trips might have been for her.

Janet told me once that she wanted to be remembered the way she looked in this 1966 photo, taken on a bridge on the Wheaton College campus in Norton, Massachusetts during a visit to me. She looks so happy – so well dressed in her suit, gloves, and matching shoes and pocketbook. She had arranged her legs just the way she always told me to pose for the camera. “Bend one knee, Carol, so you cover up your other leg, because you have a ‘funny’ leg.”

If you’re listening Mom, I still try to hide that funny leg. And I still think of you every day. Happy, Happy Birthday. I miss you!

Janet, 1966

On Wednesday: Charlie

Painting the Cottage

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“Here comes Carol with her camera!” one of my uncles said when I visited the cottage as an adult. (See “The Cottage”). I found endless and evocative images both inside and outside this brown-shingled summer home. The light through the windows and the doorways and on the wide front porch made shadows and patterns both dramatic and restful.

I admit to having cottage envy. I wanted a cottage like the one my cousins had. Our family rented summer homes on Long Island Sound for a few years, but on Sunday afternoons we still seemed to end up on the sea wall in front of the Norton’s cottage. For me there was only ever one “Cottage.”

But to make a painting of something is to make it a little bit my own. I can carry the places and the scenes I paint with me forever because of the process of recreating them on paper or on canvas.

One of the first pieces of art I made about the cottage was a drawing/collage – a pencil drawing of the cottage with a collaged photo of my aunt Ellen as a young woman sitting on a porch with some friends. They all wore upswept hairdos and puffy-sleeved dresses. I wish I had a reproduction of the drawing to include, but I’m away from home as I write this, and can only see the drawing in my mind.

Since I did that drawing in 1975, I’ve used paint to create my tribute to the house overlooking the blue water. I’ve painted it from the inside looking out.

“Sleeping Porch Windows #2,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2011

I’ve painted it from the side, looking toward the Marsh.

“On the Marsh,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2006

I’ve painted it from the front.

“Upstairs Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2006

I’ve painted a picture of the old AGA stove in the kitchen before it was replaced during a kitchen remodel.

“The AGA,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on panel

But most often I’ve painted the porch. The place where so much family gathering took place looks timeless in the late afternoon and evening light. This painting from 1985 is a favorite of mine, and hangs in our entryway in Alaska.

“Madison, Connecticut Porch, Evening Light,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on linen, 1985

And here’s one from 2005.

“Two Porches, Late Afternoon Light,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 2005

I’m so glad to have done all these paintings – a few of them still keep me company every day. But there’s nothing that beats being on the cottage porch with a gin and tonic and with people I love as the sun sets over the water, and the moon begins its nightly travels.

Margy Norton Campion and Kirt Crump on the cottage porch

On Monday: Janet

The Cottage

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Taking a vacation was a rare event for my grandparents. The most they could afford in summer, when so much work needed to be done, was to go on outings for the day. And it seems, from reading journals and letters and post cards, that the favored outings took place near bodies of water.

My Aunt Ellen, (my grandfather Ellsworth’s older sister) lived on the farm until she married Henry Norton and moved into downtown Wallingford, Connecticut. Ellen and Henry, to escape the summer heat, took trips to the Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut coasts. In the early 1920’s they started going to what my great-grandmother Lydia refers to as “East River.”

Monday, June 6, 1921 – “Nice day. Men busy hoeing corn. Agnes went to town to the dentist…Ellen and family went to East River yesterday afternoon. Got home about eight. They expect to spend their vacation there soon.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Ellen and Henry must have rented a cottage in East River during the summer of 1921, and my grandmother Agnes took my mother and her brother and sister there for outings.

Thursday, June 30, 1921 – “Stormy some of the time…Agnes is all ready to go. Children are delighted. They have finally gone about half after eight. Went after Hattie and went town way. Hope they will get home safely…All reached home safely at six o’clock.” – Lydia Jane Hall.

In 1928 Ellen and Henry bought a cottage near Circle Beach in Madison, Connecticut, and we have all been delighted ever since. I began my visits to the shore when I was six or seven months old.

Janet and Carol Crump at the cottage, 1946

I took my own children there often.

Carol, Mara, and Paul Bryner in front of the cottage – Betty Norton on the porch

Unlike the farmhouse, with its half-remembered rooms, the cottage still sits on a grassy knoll above Long Island Sound. The rooms, with their spare, comfortable furnishings, have changed little over the years. My aunts and uncles, and now my cousins, have gently and lovingly cared for every inch of the house, so that the next generations can also be delighted. It’s a happy place, and a place I’ve tried to make a little bit my own by painting it over and over. On Wednesday I’ll talk about painting the cottage and show you a few of those paintings.

Margy Norton Campion and Austin Campion on the back porch of the cottage, 1984

On Wednesday: Painting the Cottage

August Window

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Before air conditioning and before electric fans, people who lived in old houses with heat-trapping upstairs rooms relied on cool breezes and leafy shade to get them through hot summer days. My grandfather wore long underwear winter and summer. He coped with the dog days of August by moving slowly, keeping a cotton bandana around his neck, and wearing his summer underwear beneath denim overalls that had faded to the exact color of his blue eyes.

“August Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, August 9, 1914 – “A very warm day – sitting in the yard all day to get the breeze.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, August 4, 1921 – “This day much nicer, clear sunshine, floating clouds, much warmer and could enjoy sitting outside. Have been out most of the afternoon visiting with old friends…Ellen and children came out – spent the afternoon. It is her birthday (42 years). Men been picking apples. Brought in one load of hay.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Monday: The Cottage

Watermelon Pickles

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A cold watermelon on a hot summer day is a glorious treat, especially when eaten outside where seed spitting is allowed.

Francis and Janet Hall eating watermelon, 1921

Whoever invented watermelon pickles must have had the bright idea to preserve the memory of this sweet, watery, cold, pink, and green fruit for a dark winter day.

My uncle Francis loved these pickles, so my grandmother kept jars of them in the basement and put the sweet sticky blobs in a glass dish to go along with the big Sunday dinner. But watermelon pickles are a disappointment. They don’t look like watermelon because they’re actually watermelon RIND pickles. And during the pickling process they become translucent and kind of slimy. I think someone should figure out a way to make watermelon pickles so they look like the ones my grandson and I painted on a recent July afternoon.

“Watermelon Pickles,” Carol and Henry, 2014

On Monday: Ellsworth’s Room

The Creamery

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The creamery was a refreshing oasis on hot summer days at the farm. Until the late 1960’s, when milk cans gave way to bulk storage, milk from the cows was poured into metal cans and stored in the creamery tank.

You may be picturing a sterile-looking refrigerated room when you think of “creamery.” This was not the case on my grandparents’ farm. The milk cans were carried out the back door of the barn to a wooden shed built over a spring. Entrance to the building was through a tall sliding door. On the right side of the room stood a long cement tank filled with cold, cold spring water. My uncle or my grandfather immersed the cans in the water and, using pulleys and counterweights, lowered a heavy lid onto the top. Even with the tank covered, the air inside the creamery stayed deliciously cool and made for a peaceful respite from the heat of the midday sun.

“The Creamery in 1972,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

On Friday: Watermelon Pickles

July Window

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Weather was a major pre-occupation for the Whirlwind Hill farmers. Each year in June and July they looked for sunny dry days to help make good hay. Journal keepers often start entries talking about what kind of day it was. Lydia was no exception. I do it myself when I write in my own diary. It eases me into the recollection of the day and makes each entry part of a bigger cycle of life and living.

“July Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Tuesday, July 28, 1914 – “Rainy. Men working around home. Pa went to town in afternoon. Agnes ironing, etc. All done at three o’clock, a busy day for housekeepers, quite a large ironing for us. Am willing to help but think I am more in the way than I can do good, but never mind, they will all get old if they live long enough. It is hard to grow old and feel that your usefulness is gone.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, July 16, 1921 – “Nice hay day. All very busy. The busiest of all. Agnes took the children to town in morning. Emily [hired girl] busy doing the work, righting the upset rooms, washing dishes – scrubbing the floors, doing chamber work. Agnes doing the baking when home, also helping rake the hay and drive the horses for unloading it at the barn. They got in most of the hay that was cut.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Friday: Independence Day

Three Notches

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The southern Connecticut towns of Wallingford and Durham are separated by the Totoket Mountains. My great-grandfather William E. Hall grew up on the Wallingford side, and my great-grandmother Lydia Jane Hart on the Durham side. At some point before they married in 1863, one of them must have crossed the Totokets by a now unused road and met the other.

My brother has the dried skin from an impressively large rattlesnake killed by an ancestor on one of these trips over the mountain. In a horse and buggy the journey was long and arduous. These days the drive from Whirlwind Hill to Durham Town Center takes about fifteen minutes.

The section of the mountain range that fascinates me is called “Three Notches.” In a letter written in 1944 to his future wife Betty, my uncle Austin tells her about his home and the things he loves:

“When I was a kid I used to be crazy to go out to Mother’s home [his mother was my great-aunt Ellen, my grandfather Ellsworth’s sister] and help them hay and milk. I would ride my bicycle out there every Saturday just to get in the way and watch. That must be a satisfying way of life, farming I mean…There is a range of hills beyond the farm which we love to climb for a picnic lunch…Our favorite spot on the range is called “Three Notches,” and on the highest notch, Mother’s dad [my great-grandfather William E. Hall] has his name chipped into the rock. That’s the highest point of land in Wallingford and you can see for miles around, Long Island Sound on one side and Hartford, the capitol on the other.” – Austin Hart Norton

After my cousin Margy shared this letter with me this spring, I became obsessed with the “Three Notches.” I love a mystery, and for me these mountains always seemed off-limits and mysterious. My mother warned me about unsavory people in that area, and signs around Paug Pond at the foot of the mountains still say “Danger – Quicksand.”

So when I came east this April, my brother and I began looking at maps and reading histories and going to the library to find out more about the routes taken across these mountains by George Washington in 1775 and 1789 and by our grandparents and great-grandparents in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We didn’t get a chance to climb to the top of the Notches on this trip, and we’ve only begun to discover the old routes and roads, but when we learn more I’ll give a full report. How I will ever be able to find that stone with my great-grandfather’s name chipped into it, I have no idea, but I’m determined to try.

“The Three Notches,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2014

On Monday: Cornelia and the Sea

On Whirlwind Hill

An artist's memories of a family farm – Carol Crump Bryner